Final Moments
by Rydd Rider
Summary: Pretty much a way of getting my darker side satisfied... Super angsty, fairly tragic, everything I generally try not to write. Rated for character death. 'Cause that's kinda what this fic is about.


**I guess you could view this as a way of getting my somewhat darker side out without polluting any of my other stories. Don't judge all of my stories by this one, this story is way off target when it comes to my usual style. I generally try NOT to kill off the characters...except for this time.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Ranger's Apprentice.**

Halt had a bitter taste in his mouth. How had he let this happen? He'd always hated being underestimated, and was constantly making sure that underestimating him was the last act in the lives of many. And now he had been the one to underestimate.

The consequences would almost certainly be fatal.

The swordsman brought his sword down powerfully towards the Ranger. Halt stopped the stroke with his two Ranger knives. The bow was no use whatsoever at such close quarters. And as for the fact that the swordsman had been able to get up this close, Halt had no one to blame but himself.

Halt quickly parried several more sword strokes. The man was good, better than good. The Ranger was beginning to have the uneasy feeling that he wouldn't be able to keep this up much longer. He was barely stopping the man now. It was only going to get worse. And he had to give Will time to get Horace safely away. The young knight had lost consciousness from the loss of blood from a wound that he'd received in his side. Will had been desperate to help his friend, and Halt quickly agreed to help them get away unscathed. Something that they may achieve, but Halt certainly wouldn't, not this time.

He felt a hole open up in his heart at the same time a hole opened up in his defenses. The swordsman disarmed him, and Halt knew this was his last battle. He looked over the warrior's shoulder, hoping for a final glance of his apprentice.

He saw Will dragging Horace away. Safe then, as of now. Halt felt his world dissolve, fade into frames and flashes of colors.

Green, mottled and blended with gray and brown.

Will's cloak twisted as he turned to face his former mentor, seeming to sense the eyes on him.

White, pale as milk.

Halt saw Will's eyes widen, his features freeze into an expression of utter horror, his face drain of blood to reach a color to rival the pallor of a ghost.

Orange, the hue of the sunset.

The passion was orange, somehow, as Will shouted his name. "Halt!" But the voice wasn't Will's. It was mangled with desperation, tinted with the knowledge that it was too late. And orange cry. Why was it orange?

Blue as the sea, deep and salty… or was that the tears?

Every emotion burst forward in a shout surely heard in Skandia. A grieved outcry born blue, the color his own mind put to the love. He called, not a name, but the truth he felt. "Son!" His voice cracked, but he hoped Will heard it all the same.

Silver as the Oakleaf he wore loyally around his neck.

He heard a whistling sound as the sword came down, directly onto his head.

Red, thick, crimson, flowing.

The pain was everywhere, everything, it was in him, it was him. There was nothing but the pain. It was there for but an instant. Then it was gone.

Black.

* * *

Will came. Of course he did. After killing the swordsman with something bordering happiness, he knelt down beside his mentor's still form, somehow smaller in death.

Tears flowed freely down his cheeks and his shoulders shook, the convulsions becoming more pronounced as he recalled the last word that Halt had spoken.

_Son._

Will's sobs were completely open now, racking his body, causing his breath to come in short, painful gasps. He looked down, letting a hand drop onto Halt's head and allowing the fingers to immerse in the blood. Who knew that there would be so much? There was a lake of it here, the color of water shadowed by the setting sun. Over this lake, it was the setting of a life, a life worth, to Will, every bit of the sun.

Ever so carefully, Will traced the line of his mentor's broken skull, the tears from the living mingling with the blood of the dead. His fingers stopped somewhere in the late Ranger's hair, curling into it like it was the last handhold on earth.

"You always did have the worst haircuts," he muttered, his voice breaking. He bowed his head and said only one more word, breathed, so quiet it was barely audible:

"Father."

And then he was collapsed on the cooling chest of the corpse of the man who had taught him so much, heaving and lurching with the cries that racked his world.

**...Sometimes I scare myself... I was going to write a series of one-shots for the death of a lot of the main characters, not in any order whatsoever, but seeing how this one turned outI might not any more. Angst was what I was aiming for, and I think I got a little too much of it. This may be a lonely little one-shot, depending on the response it gets. So, please review, even if it's just to say you don't want me to go on...**

**-Rydd Rider**


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